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The RMS Lusitania, launched in 1907, was one of the fastest ocean liners of her time, holding the Blue Riband for fastest Atlantic passenger liner crossings along with her sister ship, the RMS Mauretania. With the help of state-of-the-art Parsons steam turbine engines generating 68,000 horsepower [1], fed by 25 boilers and turning four huge screws (propellers), she regularly cruised at 25 knots.

RMS Lusitania coming into port

On May 7, 1915, during World War I, she was nearing the end of a crossing from New York to Liverpool. South of the coast of Ireland, her lookout saw a trail of foam rapidly approaching the ship and shouted “Torpedoes!”. There was just one torpedo, but it slammed into the starboard side and detonated. Moments later a huge secondary explosion rocked the ship. She sank in just 18 minutes amid a chaos of trying to launch lifeboats, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people on board, including 128 Americans. [2]
The torpedo came from the German submarine U20. The sinking of the Lusitania outraged Americans and helped turn the national sentiment, which had been very isolationist and neutral regarding the great European war, decidedly against the Germans. The Lusitania incident contributed to America eventually entering the war on the side of Britain and France. Why would the Germans attack a passenger liner with innocent women and children on board? Was this a wanton case of barbarism, as the English news stories claimed?
As always, there is more to the story than this. Near the start of the war in August 1914, the British, wanting to leverage the might of the Royal Navy, imposed a blockade of German ports. This blockage was very effective, causing starvation in Germany and the eventual deaths of 763,000 civilians, according to official statistics [3]. Germany responded with the only advantage she had, which was her submarine service, the most advanced in the world. Germany declared the North Sea and the area around the British Isles a British “military area” and warned that any ships entering this area, including those from neutral countries, were subject to submarine attack. The British admiralty responded to this declaration with orders for a merchant ship who encounters a submarine to steer straight for it at utmost speed – in effect instructions to ram the small and vulnerable submarine. The “rules of war” up to this time called for warships intercepting merchant vessels to stop them and allow for passengers and crew to disembark before firing on the ship, unless the ship resisted, attempted to flee, or was part of a convoy. The Germans were aware of the British admiralty instructions and the extreme vulnerability of a submarine on the surface. In addition, a submarine with a surface speed of 15 knots could not possibly keep up with a fast liner like the Lusitania. In light of this, in February the German government announced that allied ships in the war zone would be sunk without warning.

German warning notice

Most passengers were unaware of two crucial facts about the Lusitania. First, she was secretly subsidized by the British government, and in return was built to meet with specifications to allow her to be converted to an Armed Merchant Cruiser if the need arose. She had magazines for powder and ammunition, and gun mounts concealed underneath her decks. Second, on her final voyage she was carrying contraband (military cargo), including 4.3 million rounds of Remington .303 cartridges, used in both rifles and machine guns. Passengers were not aware of the contraband, but the Germans, via their spy network, almost certainly were. In fact, the German Embassy in Washington took out an ad in the New York newspapers, warning people not to book passage on the Lusitania. The German notice was printed next to a Cunard Line advertisement for the voyage, and caused a stir. Many people took heed, and the Lusitania was only at about half capacity on the final voyage.

All of these factors combined to a situation where the U20 issued no warning and simply fired a torpedo when the Lusitania came within range. The propaganda offices in both Britain and America were quick to portray the attack as a war crime. The Kaiser was quick to defend it. So the question for discussion is: was the commander of the U20 justified in this situation to fire on the Lusitania, or were the newspapers correct, and this was a barbaric act and a war crime?Vox’s Take: War is a very difficult thing to conduct in a “civilized” manner. In the words of William T. Sherman, “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.” [4] Certainly, it’s hard to see how the sinking of a passenger liner loaded with civilians is justified. But did the Germans, with their people starving, have a right to enforce their own blockade in the manner they could, as the British were doing? And what did the Brits intend to do with the 4.3 million rounds of ammunition? Why, shoot them at the Germans of course. It can be argued that the Germans did indeed give warning, not on the high seas but before the voyage even began. My take is that the sinking was not “civilized”, but was not a war crime, given the conditions in which it occurred. What’s your take?

The Boston Molasses Disaster or Boston Molasses Flood is one of the more bizarre disasters in American history. On January 15, 1919 a huge molasses tank failed explosively, sending a flood of hot, sticky, sweet molasses through the streets of Boston’s North End.

Boston Molasses Disaster Aftermath

The steel tank, operated by the Purity Distilling Company, was 58 feet high and 90 feet in diameter, and held something close to its capacity of 2.5 million gallons. When the tank burst, the concussion of the explosion or “rush of air” was strong enough to knock a truck into Boston Harbor. The splitting seams sent rivets shooting out like bullets, and pieces of steel flew out like shrapnel. The real destruction, however, came from a 7 to 15-foot high, 35-MPH wave of molasses with a pressure of 2 tons per square foot. The molasses swept buildings off their foundations, crushed the girders of an elevated railway and swallowed up dogs, horses and people in its path. 21 people were horribly killed – crushed or burned or drowned in molasses. Another 150 victims were injured. It took six months and 87,000 man-hours to clean up the molasses.

Crushed girders of the elevated railway

As you might expect, over a hundred lawsuits were brought in the months and years following the disaster. Over 3,000 witnesses testified in court, and 45,000 pages of testimony and arguments were generated. The Purity company tried to blame the tank’s failure on an outside explosion, a bomb planted by an anarchist (the disaster occurred right after World War I, when the “anarchy scare” was at its height). The supposed motive was because the molasses was destined to be made into industrial ethyl-alcohol, which was used in the munitions industry. The prosecution argued that the tank was not reinforced properly and was not properly inspected. Other factors could have come into play, such as the fact that the temperature went from 2°F the prior day to an unseasonably warm 41°F the day of the explosion, and internal pressure could have built up in fermentation or other processes. In addition, the tank had only been filled to capacity eight times, putting a cyclical load on the structure. After 6 years, the trials eventually found no evidence for a bomb and laid the blame on the Purity company. Around a million dollars was paid out to claimants (about 12 million today).
A number of urban legends have persisted in the years following the disaster, such as the one which states that on a hot summer day, one can still smell molasses in the North End. Another legend purports the tank was overfilled in expectation of Prohibition (since molasses is also used to distill into rum). Time has distanced us from the tragic nature of the incident and allows us to appreciate the local’s name for it: “The Boston Molassacre”.Sources:
[1] What caused the great Boston Molasses Flood?, The Massachusetts Historical Society
[2] The Molasses Disaster of January 15, 1919, Yankee Magazine
[3] Jan. 15, 1919: Morass of Molasses Mucks Up Boston, Wired Magazine
[4] Boston Molasses Disaster, Wikipedia